— I read that the idea of the Treehotel was born on a fly fishing trip to Russia.

Kent: “That’s correct, but it started with a film that was made here in Harads village by a couple of guys from Stockholm. The idea was to make a documentary about finding their roots and connecting with their childhood. The name of the film was Tree Lover because they really liked to stay up in trees and tell stories about them. In this film they built a tree house, and after the film was finished it was left empty, so we asked them to rent it out to us. That’s where I got the idea from.

Then, three years ago I took that idea with me on a fishing trip to Russia. There were three architects on this trip and when we sat around the campfire with a glass of vodka I presented the idea for the Treehotel to them. I asked them if they were interested to come to the forest with us and of course they loved the idea.

They came up, looked at the forest and said, “This is my tree!” and there was a big fight to find the best place for their tree house.”

— Treehotel Mirrorcube

— I’ve seen many tree houses. They’re all very similar but yours are something completely different. Was that your brief to the architects?

Kent: “Yes, I told the architects that they must come up with a unique design and that they could not speak to each other. They had to do it by themselves and couldn’t look at any other ideas. They had to create something new that you couldn’t find anywhere else in the world.

We also decided that the tree houses must be comfortable hotel rooms useable year-round, even in severe cold temperatures or rain, and that they must be safe and easy to reach by a better system than standard ladders.”

— Treehotel Mirrorcube

— Do you have a favorite tree house?

Kent: “No, they are all so different. It depends on your mood. If you want to be free and alone, you stay in the Bird’s Nest because nobody can reach you up there. You can pull up the stairs with a remote control and you are free like a bird. It’s only got a small window but it’s great do some deep thinking. The Blue Cone has the biggest window with the best views and it’s the only one overlooking the river.

The Cabin is perfect for a couple, for a honeymoon maybe. It has a really nice, big bed in the centre of the room where you can see nature outside from your pillow. It’s the biggest tree house with 24 square meters and has a big open terrace on the roof.

Of course the Mirrorcube is very unique. We told the architect that he must make something that can work with nature. He had the opposite view that nature must reflect in our buildings. The Mirrorcube fits everywhere, because wherever you put it in the forest, it’s just the reflection of its surroundings, a reflection of nature.”

— Treehotel Blue Cone

— I heard that the UFO is coming soon to Treehotel...

Kent: “Yes, we are building it now and it is almost finished. And we have decided on the one after that already. It’s a Finnish architect who has sent us a very nice idea. We have a couple more great drawings from other architects but we will only do one more for now.

And next week the architects of the first houses are coming back. They will stay in their rooms to get a feeling whether everything is the way they imagined it to be and maybe change some things. We want to try to find the best solutions and use what we have learned with the new architects.

We are thinking about building a service house this autumn so people can have shower and dressing rooms as well as a small shop. And we will also make a chapel for people so they can get married in the forest.”

— Treehotel Blue Cone interior

— I read there is a small kitchenette in the tree houses as well. Is that correct?

Kent: “Not really a kitchen, just a coffee maker and a kettle so people can make coffee and tea. People come down to the Britta’s Guesthouse to have breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Our guests check in at the Guesthouse and then walk about 5 minutes to come up to a tree house. It’s like going to another world, walking through nature up to that tree house. That change from one world to another is very important for us.”

— Your philosophy at Treehotel is to live in harmony and respectfully with nature. Could you elaborate?

Kent: “When we started to make these tree houses, we decided not to destroy anything — neither the ground nor the trees around them. We simply find places where we don’t need to cut any trees. We make small paths that fit in perfectly with the forest without taking anything out, so when you come up here it’s absolutely untouched nature.

We build the houses on living trees so we must take care of them for the future. They must survive and hold up the tree houses. We used special wood that has been heat-treated and not impregnated with chemicals. Of course it’s much more expensive but in the long term it will be much better for nature. The toilet system is 100% eco friendly. Like an incinerator, it burns everything into ash so we can return it to nature.”

— Treehotel Bird's Nest

— Tell me a little bit about the climate. You are very, very far up north, about 60 kilometers south of the Arctic Circle.

Kent: “It’s a really big forest there. That’s the reason we started this project; it was the only thing you can really develop here. It’s a real wild area. We have some wild animals, we can see moose nearly every day around the tree houses and reindeer, of course.

I think for us who live here, every season has its charm. The winter is just beautiful with the white snow and the sunny, clear days. Springtime, especially April, is also perfect. There is still snow but the warmth is coming back. You can go skiing and have the sun shining, the berries start growing and you can go pick mushrooms in the forest. The autumn is, of course, beautiful because of the many colours in the forest. And summer for us is the most boring. Yeah, you can have a very good time and it is warm and all that but it is the same all over the world.”

— Treehotel Cabin

— You offer quite a lot of activities for the guests at Treehotel. What are some of the most popular ones that guests enjoy doing?

Kent: “Most of the activities we have here at Treehotel are connected to nature, so it’s dog-sledding and snow-shoeing, walking in the forest, husky safaris, kayaking or fishing.

We also offer a village walk. We take our guests on a walk exploring the history and culture up here. We are then invited to private homes and have a coffee or tea while the family tells us their story of living here.

And we have a lot of activities around horses too. You can do forestry work, cutting trees and dragging them with a horse like it used to be done 50 or 60 years ago. And you can even go skiing behind a horse, which is a thrill and very special. And of course, we have a sauna as well.”

— Treehotel Cabin

— What do you think is special about staying with you?

Kent: “Of all the guests who have already been at Treehotel, 99% are really happy. They love the idea and say that it is magic.

Down at the Guesthouse, we have a very cosy and home-like house where we really take care of the guests. It’s really the most important thing that you’re interested in your guests, that you take care of them, talk to them and give them great food. Of course they like to be in the tree houses but perfect rooms without hospitality is nothing. You must have both together.”

— Treehotel Cabin interior

— Looking back, what is special about Treehotel? What’s the most rewarding?

Kent: “It has been a lot of work with very long days and when you are in the middle of it, you do not have time to think. But we are very happy with the results. Our lives changed quite a lot but me and Britta, we are still the same, we haven‘t changed. We are too old for that.

But we do look forward to the future and hope to grow in small steps and build a couple of new tree houses every year. And I like the idea of developing the concept further. At the moment we are working with a university to create new ideas to develop products that work together with nature. Together with artists we are also going to develop a lot of design products which are connected to the forest, the trees and a stay here.”

—

— Thank you, Kent!

Please check directly with the owner for special arrangements or information not listed here.

This concept is based upon the contrast between exterior and interior. From the outside it appears as a big nest, only the scale separating it from other nests in the vicinity. Discreet windows are almost hidden by the network of branches.

Inside it’s a high standard room with modern design. A coachwork panel decorates the inner wall. There is space and beds for a family with two children. The bedroom is a separate room with sliding doors. You access the nest by a retractable staircase.

To build a cabin in terrain with difficult access, furthermore up in a tree, demands simplicity and lightness of materials and design. This tree room is founded on three points of support. Access to the tree room is by a bridge from the mountain behind. The building is a traditional wood construction with a façade of split birch. The windows: cupola of plastic. The dream of living in a tree need not be any more complicated than that. Number of beds: One double bed first level and two single adult beds on the loft.

The site of The Cabin is chosen with regards to our ideal: high ground with a steep slope, providing a great view of the valley of the Lule River.

When visiting Harads to view possible sites, we formulated an idea around a horizontal approach: a footbridge leading to a spacious deck, offering the potential for future expansion. The basic shape of the deck comes from the supporting trees in the slope. The actual tree house is suspended from the deck. This will hide the volume of the building to a certain degree. The deck is slightly separated from the building in order to make it appear smaller and also to allow the building its own expression.

The starting point is to create a shelter up in the trees: a lightweight aluminium structure hung around a tree trunk, 4x4x4 metre boxes clad in mirrored glass. The exterior reflects the surroundings and the sky, creating a camouflaged refuge. The interior is constructed from plywood and the windows give a 360 degree view of the surroundings.

The cube provides living space for two people: a double bed, bath, a living room and roof terrace. Access to the cabin is by a rope bridge.

To prevent birds colliding with the tree hotel, a infrared film, visible for birds only, is laminated into the glass panes.

This is a boys dream: to climb aboard a spaceship has a huge appeal for people with fertile imagination. When working on The Nest, the idea came to create something completely contrary. Suddenly it became a magical UFO among the treetops. A composite exterior with classic round porthole windows hides a modern, comfortable living space with separate levels. A tree-house that’s a spaceship: surely an irresistible combination.

American tree houses show off traditional architecture at its best - but they are a far cry from these breathtaking Swedish wonders.
The Treehotel project, around 40 miles from the Arctic circle in Sweden, offers a series of futuristic shelters up in the trees.
Perhaps the oddest is the UFO - a lightweight design that is big enough for four people and has separate bedrooms, bathroom and a living area.

As the summer winds down, I’m regretting we never got around to taking our two little guys camping. Actually, what I’m really lamenting is that there aren’t more pseudo-camping options nearby, because even though I romanticize the camping of my youth, I’m kind of a wimp about sleeping on the ground as an adult (and the only thing my husband likes about camping is starting fires).
The Swedes seem to have it all figured out. They love setting up shop in the forest–huts, log cabins, mirrored tree houses, you name it....
Treehotel: This growing collection of seven treehouses has been frenetically circling the internet since it opened earlier this year. Designed by Swedish architects and designers, they’re all uniquely innovative: the bird’s nest is almost entirely covered with branches, and the mirrorcube reflects the trees from the forest in its mirrored surface.